Broadband, the Key to Unified Communications, Is Doing Well

Numbers released by Connected Texas are interesting and speak loudly about the prudence of businesses using broadband to increase revenues.

The organization found that businesses with high-speed Internet connections have $200,000 higher median revenues than those without. It's hard to imagine that those numbers are very different in other states.

What the results don't do is highlight the other side of the win/win scenario. Reduced operating costs — another major benefit of broadband — isn't discussed by Connected Texas. Broadband by itself saves time and reduces labor; proactively building a unified communications platform on that broadband platform will drive those cost reductions much deeper.

Not everyone is listening, at least in the Lone Star State. The release says that 27 percent of all businesses and 28 percent of businesses with fewer than five employs do not use broadband “for their daily business needs.” Perhaps that will change as the Federal Communications Commission transitions the Universal Service Fund to the National Broadband Plan.

In another sign that broadband is doing well, the FCC said in a report released this week that subscribers are getting 80 percent of the advertised speeds during prime hours. About half were getting the promised speeds in 2009. The speed of the downloads — not just the percentage of the promises realized — no doubt is going up as well, though the CNET story didn't go into these numbers.